Budapest Guide
Várhegy and central Buda
The Hospital in the Rock
Opening time: Tues– Sun 10am–7pm
Price: Tours of the hospital (40min; 2600Ft), tours also featuring the bunkers (1hr; 4000Ft)
Website: www.sziklakorhaz.hu
Some six to fourteen metres beneath the Várhegy's streets lie 10km of galleries formed by hot springs and cellars dug since medieval times. In 1941, a section was converted into a military hospital staffed from the civilian Szent János hospital, which doubled as an air-raid shelter after the Red Army broke through the Attila Line and encircled Budapest in December 1944. In the 1950s, a nuclear bunker was added to the complex and was maintained in readiness until 2000, a time capsule of the Cold War. English-language tours of the Hospital in the Rock (Sziklakórház) run every hour till 6pm; . Ramped throughout for wheelchairs and trolleys, its operating theatres contain 1930s X-ray and anaesthetic machines (used in the film Evita) and gory waxworks; bed-sheets in the wards were changed every fortnight until 2000.
The ventilation system is run by generators installed in the nuclear bunker built in 1953, with charcoal air-filters, a laboratory for detecting toxins, atropine ampoules to be injected against nerve gas, and an airlock fitted when the bunker was enlarged between 1958 and 1962. To preserve its secrecy, fuel was delivered by trucks pretending to "water" flower beds on the surface, via a concealed pipeline. The entrance to the hospital is at Lovas út 4/b, on the rear hillside beyond the castle walls, reached by descending the steps at the end of Szentháromság utca and then walking 50m uphill.